President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion two years ago, giving the first official figure for more than a year.
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Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv that he could not disclose the number of wounded because it would help Russian military planning.
"31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000 ... Putin is lying there ... But nevertheless, this is a big loss for us."
Ukraine has not put a number to its military losses since the end of 2022, when presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the invasion on February 24.
US and Russian officials had previously said between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the conflict, figures which Zelenskiy dismissed as "nonsense."
Zelenskiy put Russian losses at 180,000 dead and 500,000 wounded.
It is the first time that one of the warring parties has put out its own official casualty figures. The veracity of this cannot be officially verified.
Russia does not disclose military losses, which it regards as secret.
The Russian casualty figures cited by Zelenskiy are significantly higher than the daily updated toll by the Ukrainian armed forces, which on Sunday put the total number of Russian losses at 409,820 - dead and wounded.
Zelenskiy declined to comment on the casualties among the Ukrainian population and said such figures are not currently known.
Exact casualties among military personnel have so far been kept strictly secret by both sides. US estimates from mid-2023 put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed at around 70,000 and the number of Russian soldiers killed at 120,000.
In mid-February, the US Department of Defence estimated the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded at 315,000.
Meanwhile Ukrainian prosecutors say they have recorded more than 120,000 instances of war crimes committed by Russian troops since the February 2022 invasion.
"There is no crime that the Russians have not committed during this war," Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told journalists at the Ukraine 2024 forum in Kiev, noting that investigations had already led to 80 convictions in Ukrainian courts.
Ukraine is aiming for tribunals modelled on the Nuremberg trials held after World War II at which Nazi war criminals were tried. Kostin cited the example of crimes committed in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which fell to Russian forces in May 2022.
Russian forces have regularly been accused of executing unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Ukraine says the situation on the battlefield is being impacted by the late arrival of half of military aid from Western allies.
"Fifty per cent of what has been promised does not arrive on time," Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told journalists in Kiev, as Ukraine enters its third year of fending off a Russian invasion with Western support.
According to Umerov, Kiev's defence campaign continues to be hampered by the lack of air superiority. Ukrainian pilots are currently undergoing training on Western F-16 fighter jets, which are due to arrive in Ukraine in the first half of 2024.
with DPA
Australian Associated Press
